Finally the US Government shows some balls.

Feds block AT&T's buy of T-Mobile - Posted: 08/31/2011 10:35 AM.

On an unrelated note -

It's rather distressing to see poor grammar in of all mediums, a newspaper.

'Buy' in this context is being used incorrectly, as it's a verb, not a noun. Moreover, they haven't actually bought T-Mobile, so even the tense is wrong.

'Proposed Purchase' or 'Intended Acquisition' would be suitable terms.

Quote of the day - 08-30-2011

Once again, courtesy of Mr. Glenn Greenwald. What he says is so obvious and so true. And the fact the society needs reminding of this is a testament to how far down the path of forgetfulness we've gone, and the disastrous consequences of doing so -

"The evidence is overwhelming... that Dick Cheney is not just a political figure with controversial views, but is an actual criminal, that he was centrally involved in a whole variety not just of war crimes in Iraq, but of domestic crimes, as well, including the authorization of warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens in violation of FISA, which says that you go to jail for five years for each offense, as well as the authorization and implementation of a worldwide torture regime that, according to General Barry McCaffrey, resulted in the murder -- his word -- of dozens of detainees, far beyond just the three or four cases of waterboarding that media figures typically ask Cheney about,"

Context? Read here - http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/former-bush-official-promises-testify-if-som

Is it just me?

Or have things really taken a turn for the worst at Mini-Microsoft?

Behold - https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7555958&postID=7724554116624746518

But here's something interesting -

10 Sensible Things Microsoft Is Too Stupid To Do:




1. Move all online properties including Bing, Live, Skype and O365 into a separate company and float it, initially 100% MS owned. This entity owns its P&L and either sinks or swims.

2. Buy Nokia. Against iOS and with Google's MOTO purchase, not owning end-to-end HW and SW experience spells doom for WP 7.

3. Make E&D including Nokia a separate company and float it, initially 100% MS owned. Again, this entity owns its P&L and either sinks or swims.

4. Demote Ballmer to head of WW sales. Move Turner to the role he is best suited for, Chief Bureaucratic Officer, or better still fire his ass and get someone to run operations.

5. Hire a real CEO with similar deal Tim Cook got - 1/2 billion $ vesting over 10 years.

6. Terminate idiotic 'curve' BS. Hire a top-notch HR consultancy to fix the review system. Let LisaB spend more time with her family, and hire a real HR VP, not some 20 year product group hack.

7. Double dividend

8. Remove stock awards and pay market rates.

9. Remove current Board and get some people who actually can find their ass with ONE hand.

10. Completely review the software development practices, which currently are unable to create products customers want to buy.



Monday, August 29, 2011 9:06:00 AM



I would add one more key thing - hire some actual testers who spend their time you know, testing the software, instead of being coders who develop code to mimic testing the software.

Stupidity observation for the day.

http://notebooks.phantascene.com/2011/07/portland-punch/

"I picked up a bottle of Portland Punch in the grocery store a couple of weeks ago. This is a one quart bottle of highly condensed loganberry and raspberry flavoring for creating fruit juice – just add water."

Oh but wait, it gets better.

"The Portland Punch has all of the things you would expect in juice concentrate: high fructose corn syrup, water, fruit juice, and natural and artificial flavorings."

Yeah, from HFCS you cannot create fruit juice. Are there people this fucking stupid in the world?

Gee ... just when you think the tech world can't top itself.

First - the number one PC maker decides to bow out.

Then the number two software company is actually considering buying the number one PC maker.

But wait - there's more!

There's this -

Steve Jobs Resigns as CEO of Apple

Assholes doing moronic things at the beach.

So over the weekend, I took the family to one final hurrah at the Pacific Ocean coast. The kids love being out on the beach, the water, the sun, and the wind; though the latter got too much such that we ended up leaving.

But besides that, there some other things I found annoying that seem to once again confirm the that stupidiots when out in full force, are the biggest enemy to all things good and positive.

Fortunately for me, and for readers, I finally joined the 21th century and recently got a phone with a camera built into it!

This guy and his son show up and park their SUV no more than 50 feet away from us -

I swear the guy chose the wrong place to park. Seriously, this cannot be more ironic -

On top of that, the guy didn't have his Discover Pass. And he took his son fishing - probably didn't have a fishing permit either. Yeah, what a fine example to set for a child.

To be fair, this wasn't the person stupid enough to be driving out on the beach -

And of course there was this stupid creature running loose foraging for our food, courtesy of its equally stupid owner not more than another 50 feet away-

Yeah - it wasn't there to say hello. It saw our cooler and made a beeline for it. I just happened to get in its way. Later I saw it marking various property of other beachgoers (nice). It tried to come back later, but after I threatened it with violence, it learned to stay away.

Some may think that pets only do what their owners allow them to do, but I assert there is a strong correlation between a stupid pet and a stupid owner. Forget the fact that the animal isn't on a leash, which is against state part rules, such creatures run around bothering people who just want to be left alone, barking, shitting, marking everywhere, and causing no end of trouble to folks like me who are just minding our own business, and didn't ask for this crap.

But the best part?

Not a single state park official in site to enforce any of this.

Of course, they spent a ton of time looking for those damn Discover passes on all the cars in a variety of state parks. Just not the guy up top, and apparently not at the park we went to. And I guess they chose to not enforce any other laws that day too.

It's not the laws (well many laws are unjust, but that's another matter).

It's not the people (there are stupid people everywhere, just as they are idiots, and then there are assholes).

But institutionalized moronicism is truly fucked up.

FASD

So as many of you probably know, I ride a bus to and from work. And as I've blogged numerous times, I seem to continually receive treatment often times worse than others, largely because I'm neither the right color or right gender for the bus driver (or 'coach operator' as they liked to be called in some circles. Fuck you - you drive a bus).

Well in this case, I seem to have picked up a special honor.

Yes, I have the pleasure of standing and waiting for a bus, while someone else usually takes that moment to pass gas. Yes it's quite an honor bestowed upon me to have this air his views openly while I get to stand and do pretty much nothing.

Why me? Don't really know.

Okay - why do I think it's just me who has this honor?

Well ....

It could be that this guy farts around other people, though in all my times at the bus stop, when other people were around, never heard a peep from him (or toot I guess in this case).

But no ... when it's just him and me, he says hello, then often times takes the opportunity to relieve himself before our bus arrives.

Does he think I'm deaf?

And ... to make matters worse ... he works at Amazon (I had the misfortune of overhearing him talk to someone else at our stop once about how wonderful Amazon's services are (they are not)) and he's a software developer, which means he's completely clueless about just about anything that doesn't involve the code he's working on (I pity any software tester who has to come to him with bugs in his code).

To be fair, he's an otherwise nice guy. He's otherwise polite.

But seriously, why is it I'm the one person he feels comfortable farting around? Invariably when other prospective passengers arrive and smell the stench, they somehow always look at me, the non-white guy.

And it's not like I can confront the guy and say "Hey! Must you do that while I'm around? My ears and nose do work. It's not my fault your alimentary processes don't work at this hour. Why do you release your gas when others are around and not just for my benefit? Or better still, why don't take care of that problem at your house, where this sort of things belongs?"

Well I could confront him, but who knows then what might happen. Why before I know it, Amazon will come knocking on my door and demanding money from me for their shitty services and crappy products.

But today, was the final straw (or note; I have to admit, this guy really only let's them go quickly and with a lot of staccato, not much sustain). So I thought - what could I do?

Maybe it was the whiff of air from his fart today, but it occurred to me, I do have somewhere I can track all this. I have this blog! I should track it here.

Thank you Blogger for providing a place online for hapless people like me to track other people and their farting! I'll do just that - AMERICA!

Then perhaps people around the world will discover that people who work at Amazon are lot like this guy, polite to a point, but will literally pollute the air around you because they are clueless and don't really care about you as long as they get your money.

So I've put up a new list for the Farting Amazon Software Developer - FASD. I'm going to track all the days this guy farts at the bus stop. If he can air his views for my senses, who's to say I'm not allowed to respond back?

And perhaps, people will discover that this guy really is a representation of Amazon - in that the literally don't give a shit about anyone around them, except when they think potential customers are near. If that isn't the definition of combined arrogance and ignorance - whereby they must actually believe their shit don't stink - then I don't know what is.

Quote of the day - 08-17-2011

Courtesy of Glenn Greenwald.

Obviously, at least in theory, presidential campaigns are newsworthy. But consider the impact from the fact that they dominate media coverage for so long, drowning out most everything else. A presidential term is 48 months; that the political media is transfixed by campaign coverage for 18 months every cycle means that a President can wield power with substantially reduced media attention for more than 1/3 of his term. Thus, he can wage a blatantly illegal war in Libya for months on end, work to keep U.S. troops in Iraq past his repeatedly touted deadline, scheme to cut Social Security and Medicare as wealth inequality explodes and thereby please the oligarchical base funding his campaign, use black sites in Somalia to interrogate Terrorist suspects, all while his Party's Chairwoman works literally to destroy Internet privacy -- all with virtually no attention paid.

Paradoxically, nothing is more effective in distracting citizenry attention away from events of genuine political significance than the protracted carnival of presidential campaigns. It's not merely the duration that accomplishes this, but also how it is conducted. Obviously, how the candidates brand-market themselves has virtually nothing to do with what they do in power; the 2008 Obama campaign, which justifiably won awards from the advertising industry for how it marketed its product (Barack Obama), conclusively proved that; or recall the 2000 George W. Bush's campaign vow for a "more humble" foreign policy.




But worse still is that the media coverage all but ignores even these pretenses of policy positions in lieu of vapid, trite, conventional-wisdom horse-race coverage -- who will be the next American Idol? -- that virtually all ends up being worthless.

Check out the link above for the full context. Wanna know why American society is going down the drain, along with the rest of the world? Because of the coliseum spectacle that the American Presidential Elections have become, to the point where it becomes an epic battle of good and evil, and where reality and fact (and reporting thereof) are reduced to being just entries in a dictionary.

I truly wish I had met Howard Zinn.

And here's why -

http://www.truth-out.org/no-human-being-illegal/1313330732

The evoluton of language?

Often times, I've heard it said that our technology influences oure culture and language, and consequently our thought.

I've even heard the term that all of this is 'evolving'.

That being said, I wonder at times -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_amnesia

Is 'evolving' really the right term?

The link above is about the Chinese language, but I think the same can be applied to the English language on some level. Specifically, I'm thinking of all the grammatic mangling that goes on when people use Twitter (are they called 'twits'? Or 'twats'? I incline towards the latter), as well as sending text messages. People, in an effort to shorten the time it takes to send a message, shorten words down to their pronounced form. So, "See you later" becomes 'cul8r', and so forth.

Yes, it's good that we communicate faster, but I wonder at what price that come at, in terms of loss of real understanding?

Quote of the day - 08-13-2011.

And this sums up the double-standard of right-wingers nicely.

Here's the paradox in this whole concept of "corporate personhood." When it comes to rights, Republicans say corporations are people. But when it comes to the responsibilities of personhood - like paying taxes, being sued for negligence or criminal manslaughter, that sort of thing - their response is "Are you crazy? We're talking about corporations here, not people."

You see, to right-wingers, corporations deserve the same rights benefits as an individual sentient person (if not more), but none of the responsibilties and accountabilities that go into making those rights happen.

Well, I finally did it.

I joined the 21th century.

I got a smartphone. Yay me.

I have to admit, I had reasons for getting one. I was tired of the whole run around with T-Mobile.

Oh I'll stop the bloviation, I lost my phone, and used that as reason to get a new one.

So there.

Still don't think large corporations accountable to no one haven't been fucking up America?

Think the only reason our jails are so crowded is due to lots of convicted criminals?

Think again assholes - http://www.truth-out.org/hidden-history-alec-and-prison-labor/1312553212

Prison labor has already started to undercut the business of corporations that don’t use it. In Florida, PRIDE has become one of the largest printing corporations in the state, its cheap labor having a significant impact upon smaller local printers. This scenario is playing out in states across the country. In addition to Florida's forty-one prison industries, California alone has sixty. Another 100 or so are scattered throughout other states. What's more, several states are looking to replace public sector workers with prison labor. In Wisconsin Governor Walker’s recent assault on collective bargaining opened the door to the use of prisoners in public sector jobs in Racine, where inmates are now doing landscaping, painting, and other maintenance work. According to the Capitol Times, “inmates are not paid for their work, but receive time off their sentences.” The same is occurring in Virginia, Ohio, New Jersey, Florida and Georgia, all states with GOP Assembly majorities and Republican governors. Much of ALEC’s proposed labor legislation, implemented state by state is allowing replacement of public workers with prisoners.

That moment has come

That time when children are no longer innocent and otherwise confused.

It's not tying their shoes, or going to the bathroom by themselves.

No.

It's that realization, before they embark in their journey to real school (kindergarten in this case).


It's the realization that all of that is coming, and they on some level know their time in the sun is coming to an end. 


Kids realize this. My son realizes this.

That's why he's been keeping the whole family awake for the last few weeks. Or at least that's my guess.

Anyone have any other thoughts?

Reality check on credit rating agency.

I'm not questioning how bad the situation is with the US debt.

I do question the people who hold themselves as 'experts' on the subject, as well as the media establishment who cannot question said 'experts' credibility -

http://mediamatters.org/research/201108060004?lid=1176526&rid=62816125

Standard and Poor's are the folks who missed the boat on Enron, WorldCom, and were one of the three credit rating agencies who gave the thumbs of to the subprime mortgage securities, which were at the heart of the financial meltdown.

Back online.

Well, after some time off, I'm back.

Was I on vacation? Well not really. I was visiting family.

I was off to Canada for four days, Vancouver actually.

It's a really nice city, lots to explore and do (and lots of hot chicks wearing very short shorts and showing a lot of bare smooth legs and buttocks). It'd be a great place to live and raise the family.

Then again, there's the high taxes, the much higher cost of living. And were it not for the fact that I picked some weird stomach ailment that gave me much discomfort, it wouldn't have been that bad. I'd have to be making twice as much as I am now to probably maintain the same wondrous lifestyle I have now.

Still, there's this part of me that felt very much at home. It felt nice to be surrounded by people who largely are not all full of moral outrage and intolerance. It's nice to be in a society where differences are accepted (if not embraced) not mocked. And it's nice to be somewhere, where waving a flag means nothing more than being happy about where you live despite its problems, and not thinking you're better and superior to everyone else.

It isn't perfect, and far from ideal. But it'd be nice just the same.